This issue is not limited to Virpil.
Looks like total overkill to me.
Not for this game it isn't. Ideally, everything short of typing out arbitrary text (though that would be nice too) should be doable without taking one's hands off their normal position on the HOTAS and without modifier keys.
If game makers had to supply compatibility with every joystick / controller on the market they would simply quit making games altogether.
No one here is asking for specific considerations for specific hardware. The 32 button limit is seemingly due to Frontier using DirectInput's DIJOYSTATE instead of DIJOYSTATE2. The latter supports 128 buttons per device and has been around since
DirectX 8.
Seems Virpil have the software to solve this issue with their hardware
https://support.virpil.com/en/support/solutions/articles/47001121642-vpc-software-technical-overview
So no need to wait on ED - hoorah!
/endthread
Even if that solution didn't require using old software and firmware for Virpil controllers (they pulled the functionality due to issues with it) it doesn't address the fundamental problem and was rejected as an ideal solution in the OP, due to the downsides of having to split a device into multiple virtual devices. While overhead shouldn't be a major issue, latency sometimes is, and having to bind multiple devices the game doesn't offer any good way of telling apart is something I can say is quite annoying from experience. With my HOTAS setup, which is multiple physical devices, it's really annoying having three of every single button listed in the binds options. I usually just edit the binds file directly in Notepad++, which is something I shouldn't have to do.
I have seen plenty of keyboards that do actually require external software to function properly if you want to get all the features working with ED, this is basically a feature of all devices that implement extra options that aren't supported by the OS, and that's usually provided by the keyboard maker. I don't see any problem using the supplied software to get devices working properly.
Windows has supported 128 buttons per DirectInput device for more than twenty years.
Most joysticks, including the OP's Virpil, have no intrinsic features that mandate any third party software of any sort. I could plug the OP's controller into a Windows 2000 SP4 system, fire up a game/sim as old as X-plane 7.0, and use all the buttons it's got, without issue, with every piece of software in the system having last been updated no less than fifteen years before the release of the OP's throttle.
Virpil's software did provide an inconvenient workaround, and third party tools still do, but none of that should be required. The shortcoming here is entirely
Elite: Dangerous.
